His to Destroy (Blood and Vows #3)

Prologue – Almeria

Rain tastes like rust. It always has to me. Metallic. Like pennies left too long on your tongue. It cuts through the night, hissing against the cobblestone as if it's angry. Everything about tonight feels angry.

My boots slip as I run. No coat. No umbrella. Just my soaked sweater clinging to my skin, and my hair, plastered to my face. I don’t know if I’m running toward home, or away from what just happened. My lungs burn, but I don’t stop. I can’t. Not when the humiliation still coils hot and alive in my chest, clawing at my ribs like a feral animal.

"Stupid. Stupid, stupid," I whisper to myself.

The alley stretches ahead like a mouth waiting to swallow me. And I run straight through it, panting. My shoulder crashes against a garbage bin. Pain shoots up my arm. I don’t care. I just need somewhere to fall apart, and no one ever looks in these alleys. Not this late.

Gaspare found my diary.

It’s laughable, really. That a man like him, the mafia's golden wolf, would stoop to read a teenage girl’s messy scrawlings. I should’ve burned the thing when I had the chance. But no, I had to keep it. Had to write down every pathetic flutter of my heart, every shameful hope that maybe, just maybe, he saw me as more than his enemy’s little sister.

The confrontation still burns through me.

He stormed into the library—our neutral ground, supposedly safe. “Is this your idea of a joke?” he’d growled, waving the journal like it was poison. “Trying to seduce me for your brother’s benefit? Playing the poor little enamored girl, hoping I drop my guard?"

I tried to speak. My mouth opened. Closed.

“Don’t lie to me, Almeria.”

His voice turned venomous, the kind that drips with disdain, that makes your stomach fold inward.

“You think I haven’t seen this trick before? I’ve dealt with worse than you.”

My eyes stung, but I wouldn’t cry. Not in front of him. I begged my voice to work. "It's not like that. I never—I didn't mean—"

He cut me off with a laugh. Harsh. Cruel. "You expect me to believe this? That you, out of nowhere, started writing poetry about the man your family hates?"

He seized my wrist. I flinched.

“Let’s see how far you’re willing to go with this little act,” he spat.

Then he dragged me. Out of the room, out of the building, across the street, until we hit the edge of downtown where light dies and monsters rule. He shoved me into the alley like I was filth.

"You wanted my attention? Here. You have it. But let this be your last game, Almeria. I see you now. And I’ll never be fooled again."

He turned. Walked away.

He didn’t even look back.

That was hours ago. Or minutes. Time warps when your heart is broken in your chest and your pride lies in the gutter. I slide down the cold brick wall now, legs folding beneath me.

My breath comes out in sobs. I try to keep quiet. Even now, part of me refuses to let anyone hear me cry. Especially not him.

That’s when I hear the footsteps.

Heavy. Measured. Not Gaspare’s. He walks like a storm. This is different. Slower. Intentional.

I freeze.

"Well, well," a voice croons. Low. Smoky. Tainted with satisfaction. "What do we have here? A lamb left out in the rain?"

I scramble to stand. My back presses hard against the wall.

He steps into the dim light. I don’t recognize him. His face is obscured by the shadow of a hood, his features hidden. A stranger. Taller than most. Built like someone who knows violence.

He grins, but there is no warmth in it. "Did your knight forget you? Shame."

"Leave me alone."

I try to make my voice sharp, commanding. It cracks.

He steps closer.

"You know what happens to little girls caught between warring families, don’t you? They get trampled. Used. Forgotten. But me? I remember. I teach lessons that last."

He reaches for me. I slap his hand away.

Wrong move.

Pain explodes in my cheek. Stars blink in my vision.

Then hands. So many hands. Bruising. Ripping. Holding me down.

I scream.

No one comes.

The rain keeps falling.

The rest of the night bleeds together in pieces.

The sound of a zipper. My voice, hoarse and useless. Blood. Darkness.

I wake up hours later, alone, my body broken, my mind fractured. I crawl from the alley on my hands and knees, leaving behind a piece of myself that will never be whole again.

Gaspare never came back.

No one did.

And so I disappear.

***

Three days pass before the newspapers report that I’m missing.

My family searches. I hear their voices on the radio. I see the pictures they post. But I don’t come home.

I can’t.

I take a bus out of the city, my eyes hidden under a stolen cap, my body wrapped in layers to conceal the bruises and the shame. I make it to the outskirts, where the shadows aren’t quite as long but just deep enough to hide me.

A nun takes me in. She doesn’t ask too many questions. I give her a fake name. She gives me clean sheets and warm soup and enough silence to let me begin the impossible work of forgetting.

Weeks pass. Then months.

I work in the laundry room at a shelter in another city, far from my family’s reach. I keep my head down. I scrub the blood out of sheets that aren’t mine and whisper lullabies to my unborn child at night.

The first time I feel him kick, I cry for hours. Not out of joy. Out of terror.

I don’t know who the father is. I don’t want to know.

I heal slowly. Not physically, but the other way. Hiding the bump growing inside me, I tell myself I’ll be strong enough to raise a child without ever letting him know the truth of the blood that runs in his veins.

The pregnancy is hard. I’m nineteen, alone, and afraid. But something in me hardens with each passing week. I will protect this child. I will raise him far from the violence that made him. I will not let my past swallow him whole.